Select Page

How a former actor helps people overcome anxiety and fears to be successful

by | Dec 15, 2022 | 0 comments

What holds you back? Why do you fear going on stage or going on camera? Brad Yates is an expert in EFT(Emotional Freedom Technique) or tapping. He uses this method to help people overcome their fears, deal with anxiety and achieve their goals.

WATCH

 

LISTEN

TRANSCRIPT

For free training go to http://www.markeganvideo.com

To connect with Brad go to http://www.tapwithbrad.com

Transcript

 

Brad Yates  00:07

So when we’re sabotaging our success, it’s because part of us believes that we’re protecting ourselves. And whether it’s just being happier or being richer, or whatever it might be. What are the reasons that you’re not making the choices that move you in that direction? So today’s guest is Brad Yeates, a former actor. He’s got around 1000 videos on YouTube, teaching EFT or tapping. So how does he teach this online and in person to help people with things like stress and even appearing on camera? Do you sell online courses or run live workshops? Do you have expertise that can help people in life or business? Are you even running an online training Empire from your kitchen table? Then you’re part of the knowledge industry of fast growing industry, that means that you can learn almost anything, and anyone can create a business around what’s between their ears. Welcome to the knowledge industry podcast with your host, Mark Egan. So Brad, great to talk to you first of all, set the scene where are you? Where are you talking to me from now? I am speaking to you from beautiful Sacramento, California, from my office, which is a shed in my backyard. Do you know what nowadays? I think there are a lot of people working from sheds in their backyard. But that’s a whole nother topic. Now.

mark egan  01:21

With you look at your about you page, it says ESP tapping and a million other things, which we’ll come on to but we should probably start with a simple question. Because if you are at a party and you say to somebody, you know, I’m, I’m an expert on tapping, they probably say, Great, I really want to know what my wife says on the phone calls could you kind of listen in for me, you know, they’ve watched too much homeland or something. But tapping out or EFT is another name for my limited knowledge of this I was thinking about when I first became aware of it. And I think it was my favorite football team or soccer as you call it as arsenal. I remember seeing the teams lining up ready to walk out through the tunnel onto the field. And this is big, German, defendable, perimeter second, and it was just tapping furiously on his chest. And I’m thinking, What’s wrong with him? He looks really nervous. It’s a big game, you know, he doesn’t look like he’s really composed. And I looked at the comments on social media, and people say, Oh, it’s tapping. He’s obviously just calming himself down and getting focused before the game. And I’ve never heard the term before. So what four people have never heard about I know, most people maybe now have some awareness. How would you describe that? Yeah, excellent. And what a great story, I was not aware that a member of Arsenal had done I’ve seen video of Olympic athletes using it. I’ve seen the captain of one of the Australian Football League players tapping, but I have not seen Arsenal I’ve been in Arsenal stadium. But yes, so tapping, also known as EFT Emotional Freedom Techniques, is this process of literally tapping with our fingertips on different places, primarily on our face and torso, to down regulate the stress response. And I know that for folks who this is the first time they’ve heard of it, it sounds a little strange, just as the reaction of watching this, this football or coming

03:14

or tapping on himself, but it’s based on acupuncture. So for 1000s of years in Chinese medicine, they’ve said there’s this flow of energy through the body along these pathways called meridians. And when this energy is flowing, naturally, we experienced a natural state of health and well being physically and emotionally. And when this energy gets blocked, and stuck, we don’t feel so good. We feel nervous, we feel upset. We experience all kinds of different uncomfortable emotions. And that causes us to not think as clearly. And we don’t make the best decisions. So obviously, someone who’s about to go out and play a football match wants to be making the best decisions. So they want to clear whatever nervousness or anything else that might be getting in the way. And for the rest of us to be clearing all that that stress that stops us from making the best choices and living our best lives. We’ll come more on to that later on. But this isn’t something where you went into your guidance counselor at school and said, you know, and they said, you know, careers wise tapping, you’d be really good at that.

mark egan  04:16

Because from what I understand, and you know if you can see the video, you know, behind you’ve got sort of pictures of movies, everything was the acting that was really your first pad that was in high school. I fell in love with acting, went to college as a drama major. I actually studied acting in London, lived there for a while. And then I traveled the world doing theater. And after I’d been doing that for a while I came to Hollywood to become a movie star as one does. While I was here I met a woman fell in love got married. And when our first child was on the way I started to think maybe I should have a backup career. When I played a doctor on TV, I’d saved sammys life on

Brad Yates  05:00

On days of our lives, and but you know, that wasn’t going to support a family where I was at at the moment. So I had always had a fascination with hypnotherapy and the power of the mind. So I trained to become hypnotherapist started building small practice, along with my continuing my acting career, such as it was. And after a couple of years when our second child was on the way, I realized personal development work really feels like my calling. This is really what feels right for me to do what I enjoy even more, as much as I loved acting.

05:34

And we left Los Angeles moved to Northern California to be close to our families. And through some other hypnotherapist I heard about this energy psychology and this tapping process. So I went to this conference in Las Vegas and learn this technique. And it just changed the direction of my of my practice. I started introducing it little by little into my hypnotherapy sessions. And little by little, they became tapping sessions. You’ve I mean, you started to also make videos on YouTube, didn’t you? So how did YouTube player powers it? So I learned EFT in 2000. Around 2007, YouTube was still a fairly new thing, maybe a year or two old. And I’d already started to do some online tapping,

06:23

sort of pioneering that as far as I knew, putting audio tapping routines on on the internet. And then YouTube came along. And I thought, hey, wouldn’t it be cool if there’s a tapping video that people use to start their morning, and I’ll call it tap of the morning. And that was all I intended to do was that one video, I didn’t even know how to upload it. I had a friend who did video things, and she uploaded the video for me. And I thought, okay, that’s done. Cool. That was fun, put a video out there on YouTube. And then six months later, I thought, you know, there really ought to be a tapping video for people to end their day. So I’ll call that tap of the evening. And then I’m done.

07:03

And then a little while later had another idea. And then another idea. And now I have over 1000 videos on YouTube. I mean, how do you keep coming with ideas for those is that by being human

07:16

experiencing the human condition and thinking about what what could tap and help people with and so it you know, cover all sorts of physical issues. Emotional well, being issues, anxiety is one of the most popular videos, money issues, helping people clear their resistance to having more money, because most people don’t recognize that people will say they want to have more money, but they don’t recognize that all their beliefs like money is the root of all evil stops them from doing things that can make more money. So using this stress relief technique for clearing out that stress around money, allows people to actually use their gifts and talents to be more successful. So there’s, there’s even ones for sports for just like

08:00

just like Arsenal choosing. So I mean, talking about gifts and talent, connecting to things here.

08:07

Acting you You said you came to London, you were trained and everything.

08:12

How does that help when you’re trying to teach people online? Well, it certainly helped me in terms of making YouTube videos, because a lot of people, and especially nowadays, when marketing is so geared towards video, everyone’s saying, Oh, you have to do videos, and a lot of people freak out about that. I’d already been doing that for a long time. I had classes in acting on camera, I’d spent a lot of time on camera and watching myself on camera and analyzing my acting on camera. So for me turn on the video cameras like yeah, no big deal. Of course, we just do that. And then also having training as an actor and performing and doing a lot of comedy. I had a certain lightness and brought some humor to it. So it’s the the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down when we’re talking about some serious subjects when we’re talking about pain and loss and grief and trauma. And if it’s just this process of Whoa, I have all this upsetting thoughts, all these upsetting feelings, it’s miserable.

09:12

People might not feel like doing it very much. So having having some lightness to it definitely helps with that. And so that all my background doing British comedy, for example, just sort of set me up for that. And of course my you can see it on the screen now my degree from Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey clown college, certainly helped with that as well.

09:36

What Yeah, I mean, that’s a whole nother kind of performance because, I mean, where did that fit in? Was that during the in between days of our lives and something else? Where did that come from?

09:46

That was right about the time it was it like just before days of our lives. I while I was in Los Angeles, I heard about the auditions for clown college and I thought that sounds interesting. Why not? And

10:00

And then I got in. They used to joke that clown college is harder to get into than Harvard because they took such a small number of people from the applicants. And it was an amazing experience two months of

10:12

just all day long doing clowning, wearing makeup, throwing pies, juggling character study all kinds of really cool things. Just like hobbit Really?

10:24

Actually, I don’t know, but they make a part. But the rest of it absolutely part of curriculum. Absolutely, yeah, you just probably cost as much.

10:32

Now, you know, if you take your acting, you’ve your clown School, which, like you say, humor, presentation skills, but also the ability not to be nervous in front of a camera. Now now with the work you do now, you must have people who say, look for my business for my personal brand, whatever I need to get in front of camera, and I’m really nervous about it. I have to do a Facebook Live, what kind of things do you say to them? How are you able to help them? Yeah, and I, there’s actually a tap for that. on YouTube. I’ve been afraid of being on camera. So what we look at are, what are the fears that come up? So being on camera, as well as anything else go asking someone out on a date, going to the gym, making more money? It’s a matter of looking at what what am I afraid of? What is the fear? So when I tell someone to imagine being on camera, and even worse, imagine then people seen what you’ve put on camera? What? First of all, what do they feel. So it may be Oh, I get this, this knot in my stomach. And on a scale of zero to 10 It’s like an eight, or I met may just get a terrible headache or this tightness in my shoulders. So we allow ourselves to be aware of what the physical sensation is, and how how intense that fear is. And if possible, we then look at what exactly are you afraid of. So it may be this fear of being judged, it may be based on a memory of, well, when I was in the second grade, there, you made a film of the school play, and I was really embarrassed and all these terrible things happen. So that’s all in our in our energy system, and we feel this stress response. So with the tapping, we would then go through and tap on those memories and those feelings. So that we down regulate the stress. And as the person relaxes, they then think about being on camera and feel much more calm. We clear up the misunderstandings that are behind the fear when you’re describing, you know things like hypnotherapy. But if you know, you’re obviously physically tapping in real idiots terms, how is that fixing something? Because it seems like it doesn’t it seem to kind of it shouldn’t make sense. But clearly it’s working for people. What was the easiest way to describe how why is that working? Well. And there are a number of theories about the exact mechanics originally, as I said, it was based on acupuncture. So this idea that stimulating these points in acupuncture, the stick needles in these points, and we’re just stimulating by tapping them, helps balance out the energy. We also know that this part of the brain called the amygdala, looks for threats, and then causes this fight or flight response in our body. Tapping these points that are, we can actually find these points with a galvanometer. These are points of low electrical resistance. And so tapping these points sends an electrical signal to the brain that helps us to calm down. There are also theories about the vagus nerves, the polyvagal system is this nerve that runs down the spine from the brainstem and interacts with a lot of the organs, which contribute to our emotions. So the tapping down regulates that feeling that it calms down the stress response. So when we’re trying to make changes, like being more successful, putting ourselves out on camera, feeling more comfortable, there is a part of us that likes what’s familiar. It’s our comfort zone. And so when we try to change things, we have that stress response. So just the very basic thing is, we’re trying to make changes, our brain perceives that as a threat and as a stress response. And that stops us so we get so nervous that we leave, we turn off the camera, we say that was a stupid idea. I’m not gonna do that. I’m fine the way I am. Even if my life is crap, it’s my crap. I know where it goes. I dealt with it yesterday. I know how to deal with it.

14:41

So as we think about that, and we go through this process, we calm down that stress response and we feel more relaxed. We start to say, Oh, you know what? The truth is, I deserve better than this. I’m capable of more than this. And it’s okay for me to relax. I don’t have to be so afraid that

15:00

Obviously, you mentioned earlier about, like, 1000 videos on YouTube. If that’s the case, why would anybody buy your course or your training is this so much? Well,

15:12

when we can be more specific, it can be more effective. So I’m making these videos based on whatever ideas come to my mind, which can be very beneficial for folks, especially because when we’re tapping along, our mind will make associations. But our mind is also brilliant at stopping ourselves from making associations, it might say, okay, we can relax, release a little bit of that stress, but not all of it, because there’s this whole thing that I’m not going to let you know about. So when I’m working with somebody one on one, I’m able to hear exactly what’s going on with them, I can hear their story and I can pick up things that they’re not aware of. So there’s, it’s like exercise. You know, you can there’s certainly a million YouTube videos about exercise, but working with a personal trainer, who’s right there with you and can say, Oh, you know, what, if you shift your body a little bit this way, you’re going to find that more effective. You said that, you know, more more people are becoming aware of this. There was a film wasn’t there that you were a part of what was tell us a bit about that solution, film by my friend, the gardener’s, and they had learned about EFT and thought, Wow, we really want to make a documentary about this. And it was funny because I at this point, they, two of the stars of two people they brought into the film were Joe Vitale and Bob Doyle who had been in the movie, The Secret, they found out that some of the people in the film The Secret had, were using tapping. And they had both. They’re both friends of mine. And they both said, Oh, you got to get Brad Jason the film. So Nick calls me up and said, Hey, can you come to? Can you come to New York to be in this film?

16:49

They weren’t offering to pay me anything. Because I was like, You want me to just fly all the way across the country to be in the film? I don’t know who you are. So I was like, I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to do that. Sorry. And then, about a month later, they said, Hey, we’re gonna be in San Diego filming jack Canfield for the film. Can you come to San Diego? It’s like, okay, San Diego is an hour flight. And it’s a cheap flight on southwest and I can beat jack Canfield. Absolutely. And that was great. Because that then the film was a great way to introduce EFT to a lot of people hadn’t heard about it. And from that, they then created the tapping World Summit, and every year for the past 13 years, I think it is now they’ve had this event that covers two weeks where they have a lot of experts on and I’ve been fortunate enough to be one of the speakers for all of those. Obviously, there’s a physical part two of this, and with what happened with COVID, a lot of things had to move completely, virtually. Now, clearly, by doing YouTube videos, it’s not completely new to you. But is this a topic that is easier to teach face to face? Is it better face to face them virtually? Or does it make any difference made? How have you met as with anything depends on the person, some people learn in different ways, for the most part, it can be done virtually very well. Most of my sessions are all done are all done by phone or online.

18:16

There is something to having a live workshop where you have a group of people. And not surprisingly, given my background as an actor, that’s my favorite thing to do is to have a live audience, which obviously haven’t been able to do for the last year and a half. And looking forward to getting back to that. But when there’s a group energy, it makes it more fun. Just like watching a comedy show. When you’re in a live audience, it’s more enjoyable to have every everybody else around you laughing than if you’re just sitting at home watching it. But other than that, it can be just as effective, I believe learning it online. Right? Just to be honest with you. We did have a catastrophic technical breakdown at this point of the interview. Luckily, we use that EFT skills to kind of relax ourselves get over it be positive.

19:07

But you know, there’s a few days have passed. So we are older and wiser. So just pretty much ignore anything we’ve spoken about up until this point.

19:15

My hair is now a little bit more gray. Yeah, I know. Yes. It’s just so much has happened.

19:21

But firstly, first of all, thanks for bearing with us with that technical problem. But I wanted to talk a little bit about your whole business setup. You know, you’ve got this expertise. Somebody listening to this might be saying, well, maybe I’ve got something similar. Maybe I have a skill.

19:41

And I’d like to transition to working the way you do. What is your setup? How does it work? How do you get customers? Who’s your target audience? Yeah. How do you go about doing that? Yeah, the main way that people find me is through my YouTube videos. And it’s interesting because

20:00

None of the tapping videos that I’ve put out, you know, there’s over 1000 of them. Now, none of them was designed as a marketing tool. I never thought, hey, if I put videos out on YouTube, people will find me and they’ll come and work with me. It’s always every single one of them is, hey, here’s something I think will help people. Now, fortunately, it has become a very good marketing tool, because people share them freely, and people find out about me, and then they say, Oh, I want to find out more. And then I work with people privately. I have group memberships, I have large, large group membership. And then I have small group masterminds. And starting next week, I’m back into doing live workshops, which is really exciting. And, but that’s the main way that people find me now is through my YouTube videos. And people must come to you sometimes with advice and say, Look, yeah, maybe I’m in a corporate job or something like that. What’s the kind of main advice you give to somebody who wants to get into this whole knowledge industry? What do you know, because you’ve been there, you’ve done that you like you don’t face to face, you’ve done stuff online, you’ve done videos, what are the common bit tips and bits of advice you give to people?

21:12

The main thing is creating content and coming from a place of service, if you are into something because I think I can make a buck here. And it’s not that’s wrong. But I find that if you are in a in a place of what can I do to benefit people, it’s a more positive vibration. People pick up on that, you know, one of the things that, that I often the comment I get from people is wow, I really feel like you’re authentic in your videos. You know, like they say the key to success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you’ve got it made.

21:49

If you’re gonna if you work on that, that sincerity and authenticity, but but really, it helps to just come from a place of I want to do as much good as I can. And people will pick up on that. And it comes back to you. But in all seriousness, like I know exactly what they mean, you just get a vibe that you know you have sincerity.

22:11

At least you that you are faking it really well.

22:15

I’m a trained actor. But it really is. I mean, that’s, that’s what I love about this work is because I get to be

22:22

myself. But how do you go about transmitting that? Because especially I mean, maybe face to face, people can pick up body language and things a bit more? How do you go about building that sincerity, that trust with somebody who you may never ever meet in your life, but may buy one of your programs? Or watch one of your videos? How Why do you think what do you think people are talking about when they say that, you know, they watch your video, and they just maybe feel like they know you when they know that you’re sincere?

22:51

Well, number one, by being sincere, it just I not trying to pretend. And it’s

22:59

one of the things that benefited me was being a trained actor. So by the time I did my first YouTube video, I had been on camera a lot, I had spent a lot of time seeing myself on camera having camera facing me. So I was much more comfortable doing it, I’d also done a lot of comedy. And I’d studied British comedy in England and had done a lot of things like that I went to clown college. So to be able to bring in some humor as well. And it’s just a matter of, you know, making it light hearted and just kind of being here as a friend of folks, you know, let him so that when they come on, they know, oh, hey, I’m going to hang out with my buddy here. And just allowing myself to just be present in that way, looking forwards.

23:51

The kind of topic we’re talking about here.

23:54

I could be my imagination. But it feels like 20 years ago, people weren’t as open to some of these new ideas. And the just general well being it was, you know, you concentrated on work or whatever it was, it feels like there are certain topics which now people are willing to kind of invest in and learn more about, do you think do you see that as a kind of a trend that people are a little bit more open minded to maybe some more unconventional methods or methods they didn’t know about before? Absolutely. One thing is that, certainly with social media,

24:27

ideas get transmitted much more easily, much more quickly. And so what was totally unfamiliar, and would have stayed unfamiliar decades ago now, in a matter of days might become known and oh, yeah, I’ve seen that before. And so we break down some of that resistance. There’s also a greater demand for it, because also because of social media and the information age, most of us are walking around with a device that is constantly telling us to be stressed out. Hey, how you doing? Oh,

25:00

Okay, let me give you something to be upset about, here’s something else that you should worry about. So I think that we are experiencing much higher levels of stress than we would have. Back in the day, even though life had its challenges, certainly life was harder in a number of different ways. And humanity has gone through all kinds of really stressful times, you know, the 1918 pandemic, the world wars, things like that. But on a day to day basis, we lived our lives, we didn’t have a lot of contact with the outside world, we might read a newspaper, but we weren’t having constant reminders of things going on. And so now we have so many things triggering our stress mechanism. So I think more people are finding, yeah, you know, what, I’m, I’m not okay, all the time. And, and we’re also more aware of what’s possible. And so we also, not only are we dealing with that stress, and trying to minimize that stress, there’s also a sense of, wow, there’s more available than I might have thought was possible in the past. And what can I use to be a better version of myself a stronger version, and more successful version of myself, is that the problem that most people are coming to you with the end of the stresses of modern life with social media and all the demands on them, and they need a tool to deal with that is that the kind of the main thing that people are coming to you for,

26:27

you know, they come to me with all kinds of different things, I it may be trying to be more successful in their business, it may be trying to be healthier, it may be just trying to have more peace of mind, I’ve worked with people trying to have a stronger spiritual connection. But all of it comes down to ultimately our stress responses. That stopped us from making better choices and taking better actions. Whatever it is that we want to create, there are things that we can do to do that, there are choices we can make. But we say, you know, I want to be healthier. But on a day to day basis, we’re making choices of I want to be healthier, but I feel like going to the all you can eat buffet today and having three desserts, you can even

27:15

it’s not that we’re bad or stupid. It’s just that we have all of this programming. And it’s going on, it’s such an unconscious level. And so when we try to make a better choice, a choice that leads to greater success or greater health, greater spiritual connection, whatever it is, the extent to which we’re not doing that is the extent to which we’re resisting it. And we’re having some kind of stress response based on some old memory, some old belief about ourselves or about the world, our beliefs about what it means to be healthier. That might mean I’ll be more attractive to people and have to deal with people in a different way. If I have more money, there’s all kinds of consequences to that. And so part of it says, at a very unconscious level, yeah, you know what, we’re not ready for that. So let’s not make that program. Let’s not write that book. Let’s not call that person, let’s not go on that interview. And we’ll beat ourselves up later for not doing that. But at the same time, we feel like we’re protecting ourselves. And given the three years since we did the first part of this interview, I don’t remember if I used my phrase, self sabotage is simply misguided self love.

28:29

So when we’re sabotaging our success, it’s because part of us believes that we’re protecting ourselves. And so that’s what I’m working with, with folks, whatever kind of success they’re trying to get, whether it’s just being happier or being richer, or whatever it might be. We’re looking at what are what are the reasons that you’re not making the choices that move you in that direction?

28:50

That was almost poetic, you’re making, you’re totally lifting up the quality of my podcast here, there’s gonna have to stamp this out now, but

28:59

sorry, I’ll do downplay it. That’s a really good way to wrap it up. And, you know, actually put it into context. So I’m sure like myself,

29:10

the listener is gonna think, well, I’m gonna find out more about this. try this out myself. What’s the best way to do that?

29:17

simplest way is to go to my website, tap with brad.com.

29:23

You can also go to YouTube and look up tap with Brad, on Facebook, Instagram, all the usual suspects. So just remember to tap with Brad, and you’ll find all kinds of resources and videos and good stuff to help you make better choices and live a better life. Brilliant, and thanks again for dealing with me with all the technical shenanigans. You know, some people would have probably had a tantrum or you know, the big stressful event but you laughed it off said you know, it’s fine. Another Well, you know, work it out. Whatever you’re doing, it’s clearly working.

29:55

Even though working with Mark is a pain in the

29:59

clear

30:00

I’ve got the tools to deal with his frustrated personalities.

30:06

Well, thanks for the absolute delight to work with. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to be on your show and absolutely worth it to spend two different days talking to you. Well, this is check it recorded, right? You might be back on with me tomorrow. But good luck with your upcoming training. And yeah, let’s stay in touch because I’m fascinated by what you do.

30:29

If you want to get started showing up on video and sharing your expertise, head over to Mark Egan video.com to access some of my free training. Don’t forget to join the knowledge industry group on Facebook. And if you want to connect head to http://www.markeganvideo.com